Obama must act, not just talk about climate change

Commentary: Keystone ruling, Cabinet picks will show resolve, or not

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — One of the biggest surprises in President Barack Obama’s second inaugural address this week was the prominence given to climate change, marking it as a signature issue for his second term.

The president spoke of the need to preserve the planet for future generations. But he also couched climate change in more immediate economic terms, with leadership on the issue as a necessary component for the U.S. to maintain its economic preeminence.

Reuters

Demonstrators call for the cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline during a rally in front of the White House in November 2011. The fate of the pipeline is in President Obama’s hands now.

“We cannot cede to other nations the technology that will power new jobs and new industries — we must claim its promise,” Obama said. “That is how we will maintain our economic vitality.”

It is a theme he enunciated back in his 2008 campaign, describing “green jobs” as a way to restore growth. But that focus got lost in the shuffle as an insufficient response to the economic downturn and the debate over health care pushed it down the priority list during his first term.

The last thing the world needs now is more hot air on the subject of climate change. A White House “summit” that is only talk would not help much — the issue has been talked to death.

At the very least, the administration must begin articulating a concrete agenda, and a first step would be to assemble a team that can do the articulating — not a coterie of White House czars but a Cabinet-level team on par with the national security team named in the past few weeks.

All the relevant desks are being cleared, with the top jobs at the Environmental Protection Agency, Interior Department and Energy Department opening up. Washington is already abuzz with the names of former senators and governors to fill these jobs and form an environmental team with some political clout.

Names surfacing regularly for the three jobs — they are seen as largely interchangeable – include former Democratic Sens. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota and Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico; former Democratic Govs. Bill Ritter of Colorado, Christine Gregoire of Washington, and Jennifer Granholm of Michigan; and a raft of Beltway insiders and former state officials.

In the meantime, though, Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman has provided an immediate concrete test to the president’s resolve by approving an alternate route for the Keystone XL pipeline project through his state so that it now skirts the state’s big aquifers.

Potential environmental damage to the aquifers has been the main excuse for the administration in rejecting the project so far, but the real risk in opponents’ minds is the entire enterprise of extracting oil from Canada’s tar sands that the pipeline will carry. The tar sands were listed in a report by Greenpeace and Ecofys published this week as one of the world’s 14 biggest “dirty energy” projects that must be avoided to reduce carbon emissions. Read the report on massive climate threats (pdf).

So if the administration caves now on the pipeline, it would immediately undermine Obama’s credibility on the climate change issue.

Environmental experts were quick to furnish plenty of other suggestions this week for what a climate-change agenda should include — from executive action to skew government procurement in the direction of sustainable products and practices, to legislative action on a carbon tax.

A carbon tax of $20 per metric ton would generate up to $144 billion a year by 2020, according to Mijin Cha, an analyst at the Demos think tank, who offered suggestions for the president’s agenda in a blog this week. This revenue could be used to reduce the deficit, provide subsidies to families for any resulting increase in energy costs, and to invest in renewable energy or upgrades to the electricity grid.

Cha also urged the administration to redirect government funds currently used to subsidize the fossil-fuel industry to support renewable energy sources instead, and to establish a federal renewable portfolio standard as some 30 states have already done. Read Cha’s blog post.

Other countries are indeed well ahead of the United States in promoting these goals. Europe used the Kyoto Protocol as a basis to set ambitious carbon-reduction targets and establish a cap-and-trade scheme for limiting emissions, giving European companies a leg up in developing these technologies.

At the other end of the spectrum, China, belatedly acknowledging the environmental cost of its reliance on coal, is mobilizing the vast resources of a centrally planned economy to develop sustainable energy resources and technology, and even oil giant Saudi Arabia has said it plans to meet its own energy needs from renewable sources.

But the Obama administration so far has not shown much backbone in bucking corporate interests — witness the lack of any effective action against Wall Street — and it will continue to face fierce opposition from the oil, gas and coal industries on any climate change agenda, starting with the imminent decision on the Keystone pipeline.

Talk is cheap, and Obama’s declaration this week won’t mean much unless he follows it up this time with action. How he comes down on the pipeline and fills his open Cabinet positions will provide the first clues of how serious he is.

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